Mysteries
- Myths - Motives
By Richard F. Haines

Mysteries:

We live in an
age of many great and continuing mysteries. Consider the human brain which packs
the information processing power of hundreds if not thousands of maxi-computers
into a volume of about 95 cm3. While neuro- and electro-physiologists gradually
discover some of its hidden capabilities and biochemists and geneticists chart
its molecular structure it continues to hide its most wondrous feature - consciousness.
Debates continue to occur over whether consciousness and its partner, the "mind",
reside within the brain matter or somehow permeates the entire human body. The
closer one looks the more one finds that the brain's anatomy merges into its
physiology and vice versa. Others study the brain's fantastic memory processes
- sometimes likened to a hologram - where memory contents are miraculously split
up and redistributed to many different spatial locations only to be reassembled
and recalled later. Yet, after centuries of speculation and study, the human
brain remains almost as much a mystery as before.

Consider the migration
of birds from Alaska to Central America and back. Who understands their elegant,
navigational capabilities that last for months at a time? Who can explain what
it is that triggers their mass takeoffs at nearly the same time across vast
regions in the first place or how each succeeding generation finds the same
locations to stop at along the way? And what is it within each bird which delegates
it to be a leader or a follower within the flock? These are great mysteries
which should only motivate us to study harder.

Or, proceeding to even
a larger domain, consider the existence of natural lasers recently discovered
far away in outer space by NASA.
A powerful airborne infrared telescope was aimed at a very hot, luminous star
in the constellation Cygnus. It is thought that extremely intense ultraviolet
radiation emitted by the star excites, i.e., "pumps" densely packed hydrogen
atoms in the dusty, gaseous disk surrounding the star. What results is an intense
light beam at precisely the same wavelength (here 169 microns) which is well
beyond the range of human vision so that we will never see it with the naked
eye. While predicted more than fifteen years ago, this natural laser remained
only a theoretical possibility yet this possibility led a few scientists to
search for it. Truly, faith must precede true inquiry. And the fact that it
was invisible did not keep a few bold and creative scientists from searching
for and finding it.

If one thinks about unidentified
flying objects (UFO) rationally for a moment one sees a similar process at work
as with the discovery of the natural laser. Representing a truly frontier area
of scientific endeavor, UFO phenomena continue to challenge those who are willing
to remain open to new possibilities. Yet unlike the above story of the natural
laser, UFOs are clearly visible to the naked eye and have been accurately reported
by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Nevertheless, something
lying deep within the soul of mankind keeps us from accepting its reality. Indeed,
this clear and present process of psychological denial is as mysterious as are
UFO phenomena.

Yet if UFOs are even remotely
possible someone will study them. But who will these people be? Will the study
of UFO continue to be carried out only by a small handful of poorly equipped
and under-funded enthusiasts around the world? Or will the august conservatives
populating the halls of science and academia wake up one day and actually look
outside through their ivy-covered windows? If they do they may see with their
own eyes what others have been seeing and reporting for decades (indeed much
longer). And then perhaps some of them will get up from their philosophical
sofas and laboratory benches and go to their libraries and reach for the best
published literature on the subject of UFOs in order to begin their own journey.
Eventually, if they truly persevere, they will find the British journal "Flying
Saucer Review" which has been in continuous publication since 1955. They will
discover within its pages a sweeping overview of these "mysteries of our age,"
as I like to call UFO phenomena. And these brave new investigators will then
find out how to plumb the depths of these many pages in order to search for
their own equivalents of "natural lasers" or "bird migrations" or "brains" or
other such subjects. The present "Volume-Author-Article Index" painstakingly
prepared by Edward Stewart will provide an invaluable aid and will save much
valuable time for us all.

Myths:

We live in an ever present
world of myths, those wonderful stories which transport us away from the problems
of everyday life and into fantastic realms of seeming unreality.

Suspended somewhere between
reality and imagination, modern myths play many valuable roles in our western
society as the psychiatrist Carl Jung, folklorist Eddie Bullard, and social
philosopher Joseph Campbell all have made clear. Some myths hold cold reality
at a respectably safe distance - to keep us from being personally impacted by
its terrors. Other myths bring reality gently into our very hearts and warm
them with comfort and light. And still other myths merely float somewhere in
the ether of the mind just out of range of focused thought, barely disturbing
our sleep at night. Yet I think that all of these kinds of myths are important
to us for they can motivate us to reach into the hidden recesses of thought
for the wisdom that may lie there. And this wisdom often springs up as a result
of asking ourselves all kinds of questions.

Human beings love to think
about many different kinds of "what if...?" questions. What if I could fly?
What if I had a million dollars? What if God should speak to me tonight? What
if that cute girl over there should walk over and talk to me? What if UFOs are
real? These are all important questions for they help us to stretch our thoughts.
They permit us to explore new realms of possibility without fully experiencing
the consequences of our mental boldness.

Sometimes we project our
"what if" questions into totally new areas of imagination and then tell someone
else what happened, sometimes giving birth to at least a new tale and, perhaps
even a new myth.

Many people today think
that UFO are only mythological. Perhaps such a belief is born out of a fear
that UFO really are "nuts and bolts" real. For by thinking about UFO as pure
imaginary constructs people can live in a somewhat perceptually safer world.
It is bad enough to be scared of burglars, rapists, murderers, con-men, the
IRS, terrorists, floods, earthquakes, and the like today. But at least UFO and
their alleged alien occupants are not a part of this list! What if our newspapers
could also treat burglars, rapists, murderers, etc. as myths! Could we not then
relegate them all to that safe and controlled area of life which is far away
from us? Wouldn't we sleep more soundly? Wouldn't our lives be better off? But,
there is no way we can treat them this way.

If UFO are really "real,"
on the other hand, our lives are made even more burdened than otherwise for
now we also have to be worried about bedroom visits by etherial beings in addition
to human marauders. St. Paul teaches us in the New Testament that "perfect love
casts out fear. " This is the best single remedy for dealing with such fears.
Can we truly love one another or must we go on fearing? Can we come to love
the thought of the reality of alien life forms? Should we do so? Will we come
to do so one day? These kinds of questions lead us to the final area of consideration,
our personal motives for making such decisions.

Motives:

Should I spend time reading
about this subject or that? Why couldn't I study to become a pastor or a counsellor
someday? Why do I think I am better at doing this job than he is? Should I tell
a little "white lie" in order to save my marriage? All of these kinds of statements
have obvious as well as hidden motives behind them. Truly, we humans are not
just a bundle of reflexes which cause us to react to stimuli which strike us
moment by moment. But what then really does motivates us? Of course there are
many different answers. Yet I suggest that in much of western society today
it is fear that motivates most of us and I think this alarming trend is growing.

Stretching from the wide
spread cold war mentality in earlier years of invisible yet ever- present nuclear-tipped
missiles above us to the present crumbling societal structure and dangers in
America's inner cities, many citizens seem to continue to live wrapped in cold
blankets of fear. The list of fear-producing things around us is long and sometimes
unrecognizable. The list ranges from invisible bacteria on our sink tiles to
huge continental earthquakes. Some of us fear an alarming increase in the loss
of top-soil while others anticipate contamination of our water supply; others
fear overpopulation of America by illegal immigrants. Still others focus on
monetary deflation or inflation or absolute control by some despotic world dictator.
But within the past several decades quite a new genre of something to be afraid
of has appeared in our daily lives, i.e., aliens from space. These creatures
are often portrayed as powerful, slightly built yet grotesque, child-like in
stature yet somehow wise, and usually bent on their own goals and objectives.

The ugly, Hollywood-inspired,
space aliens we all are so familiar with have truly invaded our living rooms
through the medium of television. It is little wonder that so many people describe
these uninvited visitors as looking alike. Our national media can now influence
the visual imagery of millions of Americans (and non-Americans as well) in very
subtle yet similar ways. And the even more disturbing result of all this is
a loss of a sense of personal control over our own environmental circumstances.
Still, all of this fear is not necessarily bad.

Fear is a perfectly normal
and useful psycho-physiological protective response. It is a practical and helpful
indication to us that we had better do something about our selves or our circumstances.
Irrational, fear-based behavior, on the other hand, is potentially dangerous
as well as self- defeating. If our encounters with space aliens produces irrational
acts someday we will find ourselves in very great difficulties indeed. But if
we can assess our personal motives concerning why we feel as we do toward alien
life forms and can trace some degree of rationality in our thoughts about them
we (mankind) will be far better suited to meet and dialog and coexist with them.

The painstaking work of
Ed Stewart in the pages to follow will lead you on to much greater depths of
wonder and awe concerning the creativity of God and of the minds of men, as
reflected in the pages of Flying Saucer Review. Do not turn this page unless
you are ready to confront your own fears directly and to try to understand your
own motives for studying UFO phenomena. What you discover about yourself will
probably surprise you more than what you will find out about UFO phenomena.